


Perchance to Dream

by voxanonymi (spasmodicIntrigue)



Series: Ignoct Week 2018 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (mostly hurt), Angst, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Ignoct Week, Implied Suicide Attempt, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, ambiguously platonic, because that's how i do things with these two apparently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 00:57:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spasmodicIntrigue/pseuds/voxanonymi
Summary: “Is this… real?” he asked.“It better be. Afterlife’s gotta have some perks.”The dawn is here, and Noctis is gone. Ignis is still here. He could have stopped this. He did nothing. Ignis is here, and Noctis is gone. But he hasn't gone so far that Ignis can't still reach him.





	Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

> "To die, to sleep,  
> To sleep, perchance to dream..."  
> \- _Hamlet_ (III.II)
> 
> Ignoct Week Day 1—  
> > _Situational: Noctis acts like Ignis’s guardian angel post-game._
> 
> Beware of mild Episode Ignis spoilers. Or rather, be prepared to be a little confused if you're not familiar with what happens in it.

The sun rose, and the world rejoiced.

The sun rose, and life began anew.

The sun rose, and Ignis Scientia alone was left in darkness.

 

At first, he’d wanted no part in the provisional government being set up to oversee and direct restoration efforts in Insomnia. He’d wanted no part in anything. Once the newest and final royal tomb was built and outfitted with its intended occupant, he’d wanted nothing but to sit on that stone floor with his forehead pressed against the pedestal until hours turned to days turned to months. Until moths turned out his sightless eyes and he could finally catch up with his wayward charge.

“You think this is what Noct would want?” Gladio demanded the second time he’d found Ignis on the tomb’s cold floor. His voice was clogged with emotion. “Wasting your life moping after him? He sacrificed himself so that—”

“I know.” He couldn’t stand that word. Sacrifice. Sacrilege, more like, that an innocent man should be forced to pay for the mistakes and selfishness of pseudo-gods.

Ignis stood, ignoring the vertigo (when had he last eaten?) and turned towards Gladio’s voice. “He left this world in our hands. It’s our responsibility to see it properly restored. Yes?” There had to have been something he could have done. He hadn’t tried hard enough, not _nearly_ hard enough. Carrying out Noctis’ last wish wouldn’t begin to pay penance for his magnitudinous failure… but perhaps it was a start.

Gladio let out a long sigh through his nose. “You look like shit, Iggy.”

“Well, fortunately I’m blind, so I’m spared from the sight of my own decrepitude.” Not that he couldn’t feel the layer of grime between his skin and clothes; the stubble on his jaw; his hair falling limp around his ears and brow.

“Yeah, but with the sun out in full force, the rest of us aren’t given the same mercy. Really can’t help but notice.” Footsteps. The smell of clean sweat and soap. A large hand on Ignis’ shoulder. A whispered notion, “I think you should stay out of here from now on.”

A few days later, Ignis was having second thoughts about his position as First Minister. He was supposed to be adviser to the king, not head of a provisional council. It was wrong. All wrong. All his fault.

All his fault.

The tomb door was locked. He silently cursed Gladio and sat in the rain with his back against the door until his absence was noticed and someone sent to fetch him.

Not even Talcott Hester’s otherwise-infectious cheer could cut through the black fog that felt more restrictive than blindness ever had.

Talcott came bearing a gift, however. A little ticket to a mite of hope.

“It was on the floor of my truck, so I didn’t notice it ‘til now.” He pressed something small and angular into Ignis’ hands. “Somehow I’m certain it belonged to King Noctis. He must have dropped it, so… I figured you might want it back.”

It was the Carbuncle totem.

“So _that’s_ where the little guy got to,” Prompto said when Ignis showed it to him and Gladio shortly after. “Wonder how it ended up on the floor of Talcott’s truck?”

It had been distressing, to put it lightly, when all those years ago they’d recovered theirs and Noctis’ luggage and been unable to find the precious figurine.

“Either it was with Noct the whole time, or there’s some Messenger magic going on,” Gladio put in. He closed Ignis’ hand around the figurine. “You should keep it, Iggy.”

“Yeah,” Prompto agreed quietly. “He would have wanted you to have it.”

Clearly they were trying to give Ignis something to hold on to. He wondered: what would Noctis have wanted more? For Ignis to keep the Carbuncle totem, or for Ignis to have used the knowledge he was given and found a way to bring back the dawn at a more reasonable price?

Nonetheless, Ignis fell asleep that night with the totem clutched tightly in both hands.

 

All the curtains were still drawn in Noctis’ apartment. The prince was still in bed.

Ignis held back a sigh. Honestly, if Noctis was late to any more meetings, they’d start reviewing _Ignis’_ job performance to make sure there were no deficiencies on his end.

“Noct? It’s time to—” He stopped in the act of pushing Noctis’ bedroom door open. The room was empty. Bed made, floor clear, curtains tied back. “Noct?”

He went into the darkened lounge. No sign of Noctis, but a strange, spearmint-blue fox-like creature was curled on the sofa. The refractive red gem on its forehead was oddly familiar.

It certainly wasn’t the first time Noctis had brought home some small, furry creature without consulting Ignis. But his usual prey were scrawny felines and the occasional hard-done-by pup. Never anything like this.

Ignis approached slowly, unsure whether or not the creature would attack. Noctis had his way with animals—they trusted him right off the bat. Ignis had no such natural charm, and thus employed due caution.

He’d reached the coffee table when the creature lifted its head, eyes instantly finding him. It’s bright-dark gaze was unnervingly intelligent.

“Are you Carbuncle?” The words spilled from Ignis’ lips as they occurred to him.

The creature nodded, oversized ears bobbing.

The totem. The dawn. Noctis. In the flood of returning awareness, Ignis had to close his eyes against the glare. He often dreamed in colour, but never with such lucidity. His heart raced, surroundings threatening to drop away from him.

The buzz of a phone in the inside pocket of his jacket distracted him. How had that gotten there? Dream logic, he assumed—his phone hadn’t worked in years. Cautiously, he fished out the phone and peered at the screen with one half-open eye. A text from an unknown number:

**> Please calm down, you’ll wake yourself up if you start panicking!**

Right. Noctis had once said… Okay. Ignis concentrated on his breathing for a moment. No reason not to treat this as any other dream. He opened his eyes again.

It was as easy as breathing.

Carbuncle was sitting up, watching him patiently.

“Thank you,” said Ignis.

**> No problem! Now come on, there’s someone who really wants to see you.**

Ignis internally scolded his heart for leaping prematurely. He mustn’t lose himself to fancy. He was dreaming, that was all. Carbuncle leapt down from the sofa, trotted over to the floor-length curtains obscuring the balcony door, and disappeared into the split between them.

Ignis’ heart was past listening, threatening to beat clear out of his chest. He followed, pulling aside the curtain and finding himself in—

—the throne room. Dazzling light silhouetted the figure standing tall beside the throne, facing the window. The room itself was slung with red and gold velveteen coronation banners: Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV.

The figure turned, coming into sharper focus. Swept hair. Angular face. Svelte figure. Ignis’ knees trembled.

King Noctis reached the bottom of the stairs, and smiled. “Ignis.”

Ignis’ legs gave out. He closed his eyes as he sank to the floor, chest heaving, eyes streaming. He wept for joy and for grief, each sob drawn from deep within his soul.

He soon felt tender hands on his face, a forehead against his own. He opened his eyes to drink in the sight of Noctis’ clear, indigo gaze. The same colour as Duscaen skies in early dusk. The same colour as the strait between Galdin Quay and Angelgard under the full moon. The same colour he’d missed above all others in the decade of his own perpetual darkness.

By the time Ignis had calmed down, the throne room had faded, setting them down in the grassy field by Alstor Slough. They were their younger selves, lying back on the soft, sweet-smelling ground. Hands entwined between them, watching featherlike clouds glide by high above. Ignis knew they didn’t have to worry about vagrant sabertusk packs, or MT dropships. Because surely this was paradise, and hostile things had no place in paradise.

“You got the totem,” Noctis said.

“I did,” Ignis confirmed. “Your doing?”

“Figured you might be lonely.”

Ignis snorted. Noctis, King of Understatements. “Is this… real?” he asked.

“It better be. Afterlife’s gotta have some perks.”

At the word ‘afterlife’, Ignis’ chest contracted. This may very well have been ‘real’ in some cosmic sense, but it was, ultimately, a dream. And when he woke up, Noctis would still be…

“Hey.” Picking up on Ignis’ distress, Noctis squeezed his hand. “This is supposed to be our happy reunion.”

“How can it be?” Ignis gasped, tears eclipsing his eyes once more. “Noct, it’s my fault you’re…”

“Whoa, hey, _your_ fault?” Noctis sat up, looking down at Ignis with an expression somewhere between alarm and concern. “No, Specs. I _chose_ to go along with Bahamut’s plan. It was the only way to cleanse the world of the—”

“But what if it _wasn’t_?” Ignis bolted upright. “Noct, after Altissia, I—I knew what was in store for you.” He swallowed hard. “Pryna, Lady Lunafreya, they… I _knew_ , Noct, and I still let you walk the long road towards your death.” He clutched at his head, covering his eyes. Unable to face the one he so loved, the one he’d so failed. “I had the power to do something— _anything_. To at least _try_. But I was too caught up in myself. Struck dumb by—by the despair of that horrible possibility, and now it’s… too late… far too…” His voice abandoned him, as if so ashamed of his fatal inaction that it refused to remain in his employ. His lungs spasmed, waves rolling through his chest and down his spine, quaking his shoulders and catching in his throat. Everything he’d been hiding from for ten years—the grief, the guilt—was crashing down on him all at once. He wasn’t worthy to so much as kiss the dirt on Noctis’ shoe.

Yet when his king’s arms enveloped him, pulling his head down to rest upon a shoulder so much stronger than it was built to be, Ignis didn’t resist. He clutched at the back of Noctis’ shirt as if it were the only thing he had left, as he spun faster and faster through endless, empty space.

“Forgive me,” he moaned and pleaded. “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.”

Noctis shushed him gently. Later, Ignis would be struck by the bizarre role reversal and humbled in his humiliation. “Of course I forgive you,” Noctis murmured into his ear. “I’ll wait for you.”

Ignis woke in his bed, the bed in the room down the hall from the prince’s quarters, blind and alone.

He still felt the imprint of the Carbuncle totem in his hand long after he had dragged himself out of bed. There was something new nestled in his chest alongside his leaden heart. Something hopeful: he would see Noctis again tonight.

It slipped his mind to tell anyone about his not-quite-dreams.

 

Ignis briefly wondered how his change in attitude looked to those around him. After that night, it was easier to face the day. Easier by far, with the knowledge that in the evening, he could fall into bed, close his hands around the totem, and spend his sleeping hours seeing, being, _living_ with Noctis at his side.

When he was asleep, he and Noctis roamed the world of Eos. Carbuncle’s reconstruction of it, at least. Downtown Insomnia, the way it had been and might never be again. Galdin Quay at sunset, the water sparkling as they sat out on the pier and talked. The sprawling starscape of the Duscaen skies, wishing on shooting stars. The morning markets in Lestallum, when it was still too early to be so hot. Altissia, the city on the water, bustling with faceless strangers as if the rite had never happened.

Noctis even showed him the places he had only ever felt, heard, and smelled, like the arid Cartanica, above the paradoxically swampy Fodina Caestino mine. He took Ignis to Tenebrae, but he never showed him inside. They strolled through the sylleblossoms and admired the twisting spires from afar. He showed him the Ghorovas Rift, the corpse of Shiva, magnificent even in death—as Astrals tended to be. Neither of them particularly wanted to explore Gralea, but they stood at the edge of the Gralean Crater, looking down at a sea of lights to rival that of Insomnia. They even found a new favourite place to stargaze, where neither of them had ever ventured before. In the far northern reaches of the Lucian continent where it was too cold for civilisation, pink and green aurora danced across the glittering dome of the night sky. Breath purling before them, they huddled together and marvelled over a sight few eyes had ever seen.

When he was awake, Ignis attended meetings, oversaw and approved the plans for restoration initiatives, and sifted through the reports coming in about the state of various outposts and resources Lucis-wide. Prompto, without ever being asked, acted as his hand and his eyes. Some reports he read aloud, others he transcribed into Braille. On the busiest days, he reminded Ignis to eat.

Ignis soon rediscovered his admiration for Prompto’s resilience. Administration work was far from his forte, far from something he even remotely enjoyed. During the dark years, Prompto had been the most restless of the three of them. He never stayed in one place for longer than a week, as if by keeping on the move he could avoid the demons watching him from the shadow-frayed edges of his own mind. Demons of a different sort to those the starscourge spawned. The same demons that had driven the three apart for a long while. Ignis had nearly drowned in his.

In any case, as per Ignis’ suspicions, Prompto became twitchier as the weeks wore on. More than once, he’d fled Ignis’ study in a flurry of footsteps and hitched breaths. Ignis followed once or twice, finding him in the nearest bathroom, breathless sobs magnified by cold tiles and porcelain.

The second time this happened, Ignis considered lending Prompto the Carbuncle totem. Just for one night. Just to let him see his best friend again.

But it would only delay the already painfully slow healing process.

(One night someone else had the totem was one night that Ignis didn’t.)

Instead, one morning, as Prompto handed him a newly transcribed report, Ignis caught his dry-skinned hand.

“I think you should join Gladio on the next supply run to Lestallum.”

“I—why?”

Ignis shrugged and took the report. “Only if you want to. I thought you might like the chance to get away for a short while. Rediscover some sense of what had for so long been normal.”

“What about you?” Prompto asked. “Don’t you feel stuck, too? Like—like we should actually be _out_ there, helping people restore their homes, gathering supplies? Actually _doing_ something?”

It was a nice idea, perhaps, but Ignis didn’t suffer from the same feeling of immutability; the sense that nothing changed if he didn’t change it with his own hands. Hands were nothing without a brain to direct them. “I believe I’m best utilised here.”

“Okay, but who’s gonna—”

“Prompto. I’ve been without vision for ten years now. I’ll be fine.”

Prompto was silent for a long moment. In the meantime, Ignis cast his fingers across the first sentence of the report’s executive summary. _Farming efforts in eastern Duscae are progressing on schedule._

“Alright. I’ll go,” Prompto said quietly. “Thanks, Iggy.”

Ignis smiled in Prompto’s direction. “Whenever you feel trapped and impotent, have no qualms about stepping out for some air, so to speak.”

Prompto laughed. “Gotcha. Hey, I bet Gladio’ll be glad to have company!”

Gladio, along with Cor, had taken it upon himself to organise the new Crownsguard (name retained in honour of its beginnings) in collaboration with the hunters and scattered few remaining Kingsglaive. Ignis wasn’t too worried about him. The bulk of their work involved securing city limits, setting up patrol routes, and making regular trips back and forth between Insomnia and Lestallum, fetching supplies and any refugees who needed an escort—the daemons were gone, but the fauna was out in full force.

So Gladio had a focus, and an outlet. When Ignis had last spoken to him, he’d seemed to be doing well.

Cor came to see Ignis one afternoon, shortly after Prompto and Gladio had left on the latest run to Lestallum.

“You’re doing well. I’m glad,” said the Marshal—or rather, former Marshal. Now, as head of the Crownsguard, a more appropriate title would be General. “You had us all worried, those first few days.”

Ignis cleared his throat. “Purged it all in one, I suppose.”

Cor hummed as if he didn’t quite believe him. Which was fair enough, Ignis thought, surprising himself with how little guilt he felt at his own outright lie.

Everyone assumed that the Messengers, along with their masters, had retreated from Eos. Ignis refused to tell anyone that it wasn’t quite true; that the Carbuncle totem still worked. He feared they might try to take it away from him—take _Noctis_ away from him. He was certain his heart would stop if he lost Noctis not just the first, or the second, but the _third_ time. His heart would stop. It would have to.

(Maybe he deserved it, for all he had and hadn’t done.)

He kept Noctis up-to-date with his waking life, of course. The would-be king deserved to know what was happening in the world that should have been his kingdom, and to have input on what was done with it. Ignis could almost believe he was making things right. Atoning for his sins.

Noctis told him stories of the afterlife. About Lady Lunafreya, his father, Ravus, Lady Sylva.

“It’s Bahamut’s reward,” Noctis said bitterly, as he cast another line into the translucent blue of Neeglyss Pond. Ignis sat on the edge of the pier, watching the breeze tousle Noctis’ hair. “Supposedly. _Carbuncle’s_ the one maintaining the dream realms. The other messengers gave their power to help.”

“Sounds more like a reward from Carbuncle, in that case,” Ignis pointed out.

“Yeah,” Noctis sighed, letting the fishing rod fade from his hand. He rubbed at the back of his neck. “The dream realms connect the Astral plane to Eos. Bahamut thinks he’s doing us some great favour, or something, by letting us keep existing here after… indirectly killing us.”

“Is he not?” Ignis asked, hoping he didn’t sound as alarmed as he felt.

Noctis glanced over, then lowered himself down next to Ignis, resting his head on his adviser’s shoulder the way he had so many times in life, sleep, and now death. “Bahamut’s given me nothing. Carbuncle’s the one who brought _you_ here,” he said.

 

On some nights, they didn’t speak at all. They just held each other until Ignis woke up, in Noctis’ old room in the citadel, feeling cold and empty and alone.

 

When Prompto and Gladio returned from Lestallum, the spark that had been keeping Ignis going had dimmed. The waking world was so dark and lonely compared to the warm, splendiferous colour of his dreams. And there was so much to do that it was overwhelming. He found himself going through the motions, passing the hours until it was acceptable to bid his friends and fellow councilmembers goodnight and retire.

In his dreams, he lived. Right at Noctis’ side, where he belonged.

Prompto, for his part, seemed revitalised by his time away, and by the prospect that he could go away again whenever he felt like it. Over dinner, he and Gladio described to Ignis what Lucis looked like now. Trees fallen across cracked and warped roads, ponds and lakes overtaken by dark green algae, grass and shrubbery blackened and dead without sunlight to photosynthesise.

Prompto resumed his position at Ignis’ side with renewed energy and attentiveness. It took him no time at all to notice Ignis’ sloppy work and general lethargy.

“Maybe _you_ need to ‘step out for some air’,” Prompto joked as he transcribed the target schedule Ignis had hastily typed out. “But, seriously, Iggy, this is… not like you.”

Ignis fought the urge to clear his throat. He’d blame the ancient Braille typewriter if he weren’t talking to the man who’d found and repaired it in the first place. “I suspect the reintroduction of caffeine to my system is not working the way I’d hoped,” he said curtly. “It’s been a fair while since I’ve had stable access.”

Prompto snorted. “Coffee jitters? _You_? Now I’ve heard everything.” But he dropped the subject.

Over the next week, Ignis inexplicably began waking up earlier and earlier. Which meant he had less time with Noctis. Which meant he spent more time in a grey haze, his blindness starting to hinder him for the first time in years. Under- or overestimating distances. Misjudging the position of items on his desk. Losing grip on his surroundings. Losing grip.

He thought he had a solution. A temporary one, at least.

“If you don’t mind me asking, did you ever use all of those sleeping pills?” he asked Prompto over lunch. He remembered Prompto conversationally admitting that he’d had to hunt high and low for a chemical aid to drive off his anxiety-induced insomnia. This was shortly before Ignis had suggested the trip to Lestallum.

“Uhh, I don’t think so, no,” Prompto replied. “Been sleeping fine lately… You, uh, having trouble sleeping?”

Ignis ducked his head, careful not to faceplant into his sandwich. “I fear it’s affecting the quality of my work. I’d thought if I simply endured, it might go away, but…”

“These things have a habit of getting worse,” Prompto finished softly. “Especially if you don’t do anything. I’ll see if I can find them.”

By the time Ignis went to bed that evening, the small bottle of pills sat upon the bedside table with a glass of water. He left them both untouched as he fell asleep.

 

“Ignis… You know this isn’t forever, right?”

They were lying on their backs in the warm, dry sand near Galdin Quay, looking up at the spread of stars in the clear night sky.

“How do you mean?” Ignis asked carefully.

“Carbuncle will get tired eventually. Keeping this dream layer open so we can be together takes a lot of power.”

The dream realms, as Noctis had already explained, consisted of the realm of mind and the realm of spirit. The realm of spirit was maintained at Bahamut’s behest; his ‘reward’ for the fallen heroes of the gods’ latest folly. The realm of mind was where Ignis and Noctis could meet, accessible by Carbuncle’s blessing. Ignis’ spirit remained with his body on Eos, while Noctis’ spirit slumbered just one realm over; the spirit realm, the official ‘top layer’ of the dream realm.

The gods, meanwhile, had retreated to the Astral realm, where they would hibernate until they regained the strength to cross through the dream realm into new-born physical frames. To put another reckoning in motion, no doubt.

“Perhaps I’ll just join you in the spirit realm,” Ignis half-joked. “I never did get the chance to meet Lady Lunafreya.”

“Not funny,” Noctis whispered, his hand finding Ignis’ and clasping it tightly between them. “What we do there, it’s—it’s not _living_. It’s just existing, with no purpose, without anything ever changing.” He sighed. “Bahamut doesn’t understand humans. Not at all.”

Ignis wasn’t sure how to reply. He squeezed Noctis’ hand, wondering at the very tangible warmth and sensation. “What about this?” he asked quietly.

“This is different,” Noctis confirmed. “Carbuncle actually put in the effort to know us. Humans, I mean. People. But the others… they don’t get anything like this.”

“They can’t join us?”

“No. Carbuncle opened this layer using the connection between me and the totem.”

Ignis sat up and looked down at Noctis, reaching out with his free hand to brush the hair out of his face. “Even in death, you take on too much.”

Noctis offered a sad little smile, leaning into Ignis’ touch. “Fate of the Chosen, and all.”

Shortly after, Ignis woke up. Like the morning before, and the morning before that, dawn had yet to break: the birds had yet to shatter the silence, and the cool air from the open window still held the crisp scent of night.

Carefully, Ignis reached towards the bedside table until his fingertips found the bottle of pills and glass of water. He shook a single pill into his hand and washed it down. That done, he settled back into Noctis’ old pillows, one hand closing around the totem under the blanket.

Noctis sat on his apartment’s living room sofa, arms tightly crossed. “This isn’t healthy.”

Ignis, standing behind the kitchen island, turned and flicked on the kettle to make tea. “What isn’t?”

“I’m _dead_ , Ignis.” Noctis’ glare was hard, but the twitch of his eyebrows revealed the hurt beneath. “You shouldn’t be wasting your life on a dead man.”

“A _dead man_?” A strange and painful bubble welled up in Ignis’ chest. “That _dead man_ happens to be my king.” Rational thought disengaged as words sprang forth. “That _dead man_ happens to be someone I love. _You_! And a life without you is no life at all—certainly not a life I would ever want to live!”

He was clinging to the benchtop, elbows and knees trembling.

Noctis’ eyes were wide, like the expression he used to wear before starting to cry. “Ignis… Specs… Iggy…” He sounded as broken as Ignis felt. “What have I done to you?”

The kettle squealed. The room tipped, wavered, and faded before Ignis could think of anything more to say.

He woke with a jolt, with hands gripping his shoulders and someone—Prompto?—babbling in his face.

“Ignis! Fuck, you’re alive! Thank god, I thought—”

“ _What_?” Ignis demanded, feeling groggier than ever. He pulled out of Prompto’s grip as he sat up, distressingly uncertain of his surroundings thanks to the sleep-haze clinging to his consciousness like plaque. The foul taste of his own breath filled his head. “ _What_ did you think?”

He heard Prompto swallow.

“It’s nearly midday, Iggy.” A different voice. Gladio. Further away—at the foot of the bed? “Not like you to sleep in.”

“Then I remembered how strange you’ve been lately, and—and the pills, and we were worried that maybe… that maybe you…” Prompto trailed off into a nervous wheeze, jostling the bed as he undoubtedly made one of his countless nervous movements. Rubbing his neck? Wringing his hands? It hardly mattered.

“You’re panicking over nothing, Prompto,” Ignis said brusquely. “As much as I appreciate the concern. The sleeping pills must have had a stronger effect than anticipated, that’s all.”

“I tried to tell him,” Gladio said.

“Don’t lie!” squawked Prompto. “You were worried, too!” Ignis heard the rattle of pills as Prompto picked up the bottle. “Did you take one or two?”

“Two. I suppose I should have only started with the one.”

“Sleep well, at least?” Gladio asked.

“Remarkably.” Ignis hoped he didn’t look as dreadful as he felt. “Now, if you gentlemen don’t mind, I have some hours of work to make up for and would quite like to get dressed first.”

Somehow, miraculously, Prompto and Gladio took him at his word. They didn’t even take away the bottle of pills. Ignis supposed that his years of tireless dependability were finally paying off.

Nevertheless, they'd planted within him the seed of an idea which at any other time of his life would have been treated with extreme caution: quarantined to a remote section of his mind as if it were patient zero of his own psychological plague. With how things were at present, however, the idea was treated not as an enemy, but a saviour. A solution.

Noctis would not be pleased. But Ignis was sure he would understand. If he didn’t, he’d already forgiven Ignis for so much—what was one last folly?

Prompto and Gladio would be upset, no doubt, but they would learn to live on. Just as they’d learned to live on without Noctis. They were stronger men than Ignis.

That night, he sat down on Noctis’ bed with a glass of water and the bottle of sleeping pills on the bedside table.

He picked up the bottle. He unscrewed the cap. He tipped the pills—

A hand clamped around his wrist, stopping the bottle from tipping. The hand was strong, but soft… warm… familiar.

“Noct?” Ignis gasped. With his other hand he reached out—nothing. No hand around his wrist. No one in front of him. He couldn’t feel a presence, or hear breathing, or smell anything other than the faint scents of dust and the soap he’d showered with. He was alone in the room.

Passing it off as his desperate conscience playing tricks on him, he tried to tip the bottle again. A hand closed firmly around his knuckles. The same hand. But there was no one there.

He began to shake. He pulled against the grip, but it was unrelenting.

Eventually, Ignis gave up. He let the invisible, intangible hand guide his own towards the bedside table, silently instructing him to put the pill bottle down.

He obeyed.

The invisible hand pressed the Carbuncle totem into Ignis’ grip. His own gasps of breath loud in his ears, he lay down and waited for sleep.

 

He wasn’t sure where they were, just that his head was in Noctis’ lap. He gazed up at his charge, his prince, his king, his love, who stared into the distance with that melancholy look he often wore. The look he got when contemplating an issue he cared deeply about.

“Noct,” Ignis croaked.

Noctis looked down at him, the blue of his eyes darker than the deepest swathes of ocean, more brilliant than the clear sky above them. “You don’t need to die, Iggy,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to.”

“I can’t lose you again,” Ignis forced out, voice wan and pathetic.

“You won’t. You haven’t,” said Noctis. “You were always there for me. Asleep, awake, whatever, I’ll always be here for you. Even if you can’t see me. I promise.”

Ignis’ vision clouded as tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. Noctis plucked his glasses off his face to wipe them away, thumbs caressing Ignis’ now-damp temples. He found he could see perfectly, even without the corrective lenses. It _was_ a dream, after all.

“What happened to me wasn’t your fault,” Noctis continued.

“Why?” Ignis whispered. “Why did you go along with it?”

“I thought there was no other way. I was tired. Tired of losing.” He looked away for a moment, taking a deep breath. “Maybe there was another way. But at least _this_ way, the gods will get what they deserve.”

“How?”

Noctis smiled. “They’ll never be able to do it again.”

It wouldn’t fix anything. Not by half. Revenge never did—Ardyn, slighted more than anyone by the Astrals’ poor planning, might have learned that the hard way, had things gone differently. Maybe that would have been better. Maybe it would have been worse. They’d never know.

But Noctis seemed confident, in his quiet, uncommon way. So Ignis lay there and trusted him and gazed up at him for as long as the dream would allow.

 

Something felt different when Ignis awoke the next morning. As if the very air had shifted frequencies while he slept.

Morning sunlight streamed through the gauzy curtains, making it difficult to keep his eyes shut. There was something in his hands. Something that felt fragile, and…

No. _No._

The Carbuncle totem was broken. Split into several jagged, uneven pieces. The little red gem had shattered into dust, coating Ignis’ hand in red glitter.

Numb, black static overcame him as he stared uncomprehendingly at the broken totem. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be—

He snapped back to himself as he realised:

he could see.

The sheets twisted around his ankles, sending him sprawling to the floor in his mad dash to the mirror.

**blue.**

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so the prompt _really_ got away from me. I concede the point. Uh... yeah I have nothing else to say in my own defence. Please yell at me.
> 
> I promise day 2 won't be as angstyhhaahahaha i'm lying. I don't know how to write non-angst. I'm also on [tumblr](https://voxanonymi.tumblr.com/) and have something planned for day 8 which I'll only be posting over there because it's... not a fic. It sort of relates to this one, though!


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